March 21, 2012

Electric bicycle 2.0

Since it is finally getting warm outside again (Yea!) I decided to take out my old electric bicycle and finish everything! There were tons of emails and questions about the bicycle and the motor, so here's a post that'll hopefully answer most of your questions!

Click "Read more" for pictures and further information!

So lets sum up the materials:

I purchased the 300 Watt 24V DC Scooter motor (45€) of ebay. The two 12V 10Ah batteries (35€) came from ebay, too. The power switch was extracted from an old computer power supply.

The bicyle itself is a so called "bone shaker" but works perfectly fine. It was very cheap, too.

This is one of the two batteries:

This is the motor with a small wooden wheel from a local hardware store:

Here's a picture of the simple on/off switch:

Detailed views of the motor attached to the bicycle in the videoI tested it on private property. The bicycle is now disassembled:

Facts about the bicycle:

The motor draws up to 16 Ampere when you start the bicycle. 5 to 9 Ampere on normal surface with average speed of 27km/h.

You are allways able to pedal yourself and its not very hard, even if the motor is turned off. I demonstrated it in the video!

The batteries take about 10 hours to charge with an simple 12V charger from ebay. The batteries are a little bit heavy but since they're stored in a bag fixed to the bicycle it is not a problem at all. I can drive about 20 kilometers with one full charge without pedaling. The top speed without pedaling was 36km/h measured with GPS android Sports Tracker. Furthermore the tire does not get flat due to friction from the motor's drive wheel. There's one disadvantage though: It does not work properly in rain, but who wants to go by bike when its raining anyways? All in all it cost about 100 bucks and works perfectly fine! So if there still are questions ask in the comments below I will try to answer them sooner or later!